At two in the afternoon, a young Protestant man mounted on a podium in the middle of the park and read aloud the Declaration of Independence. Immediately after he had finished, the crowd cried at the top of their voices, "Daehan dongnip mansae 1(Lee, 2000, p. 133)! " The rally that took place in Pagoda Park lighted the fuse of nationalism of the people who subsequently staged numerous demonstrations elsewhere. "Within days, independence movements erupted in virtually every corner of the country, in nearly all segments of the society, with over two million directly participating in more than fifteen hundred gatherings, occurring in all but seven of Josun's 219 county administrations (Lee, 1988, p. 344). " .
That the Korean-Protestant people were deeply involved in orchestrating and participating in the March First Movement is a well-received argument within the academia of Korean history (Han, 2000; Man-Yeol Lee, 1997; Lee, 2000; Park, 2013). Based on a statistical report from the Japanese government-general of Josun, Man-Yeol Lee quantifies the degree to which the Korean-Protestant people participated in the Movement. In 1919, 340 demonstrations transpired across 311 regions. Out of these 340, the Korean Protestant people took the lead of 78, the Chondogyoans 66, collaboration between the two religious groups 42, and other religious groups 125. Regarding figures in incarceration, out of 19,525 prisoners, the Korean-Protestant people numbered 3,373 and the Chondogoyans 2,297. When comparing this statistics with the total population of Josun, how passionately they participated in the Movement becomes more evident. Out of 16,000,000 Koreans, only 20,000 (1.3-1.5%) were the Korean-Protestant people. In contrast to this negligible figure, the amount of participation the Korean-Protestant people showed in the Movement in relation to that of the total religious groups ran to 30%. .
When I first stumbled across these incredible statistics, I could not help but wonder, "How was this religious minority able to play such a significant role in bringing about the watershed event? " I could not readily pinpoint an answer, for the odds stacked heavily against their favor.